Saturday 15 November 2014
Harriet - December Song (I Dreamed of Christmas)
40 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!
The countdown to Harriet's forthcoming Christmas EP (Maybe This Christmas, due November 24th) is almost as exciting as the countdown to Christmas itself. The soothing and inspiring A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes is a glittering bauble of a track that keeps sparkling and uplifting with each consecutive play. With this second track she's gone a different route and chosen to cover George Michael's winter classic December Song (I Dreamed of Christmas). What Harriet proves here is that she is not just a performer of pop music, she's an investor in it too. What I mean by this is that she clearly researches the song, looks at the placement of words, studies how the music can provide an unspoken narrative companion to the lyrics that she sings. She then, as has been so sublimely evidenced with all her songs to date, pours her entire being into making that song her own. She extrapolates the emotions and builds on her own experience to provide a vivid vocal that tells more of a story than just the words and music ever could. It's musical alchemy at it's finest and surely a gift that's not just for Christmas. December Song is a wistful, melancholy piece of music that radiates with the glimmer of hope that Christmas brings. Surely in a world so horrible things can be a little bit special if only for the one day is the message here and it is presented with an earnest yearning by the young lady herself. Accompanied by a lulling piano chord arrangement that feels as delicate and fragile as a singular falling snowflake yet resonates as clearly as a vast winter wonderland, Harriet sings the more reverent parts of the song with a somber incantation that accentuates the solemn majesty of the season. She's nothing but warm hearted longing on the parts of the song where the illusion of Christmas, the notion that it can heal all wounds albeit just for a while is the motivating wish fulfilment of the beautiful words - and she brings this into vivid focus with that mesmerising voice. She brings a childlike wonder to her delivery that would melt the most stubborn of hearts particularly as she's devastating and yet life-affirming with those words and the cadence of her vocals (certainly a theme that continues from A Dream... because Christmas is a time of heightened emotions when sad seems sadder, happy seems elated and a dream that you wish can come true). The song starts and ends with these textured harmonies that feel like the actual response to dreaming of Christmas, like somehow the purity of song has traversed through the mists of time to grant a wish to deserving folk. Just breathtaking.
Ghosts of Christmas past:
It's amazing how much her voice sounds exactly like Karen Carpenter!
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